Weeks Eleven and Twelve: 16 mile run

These two weeks were very difficult training-wise. I took a long time to recover from the previous 14-mile run, and I was travelling Thursday-Monday of the following week. So I ended up doing the buddy run, but skipping my OYO run on the weekend. In addition, the travel and the jet-setting caused me to catch a cold, cough and fever. I therefore had to miss the track workout and cardio workout for the week just before the 16 mile run. In fact, until the day before the run, I had some fever and I was not sure whether I will be able to go for the run. Thankfully, on the day of the long run, I felt about 80-90% fit, and I decided to go for it.

The route was the second half of the Nike marathon- in San Francisco. It involved some gentle hills around Lake Merced, on the Great Highway, and in Golden Gate Park. It was a beautiful route, although I was in no mood to enjoy it. I was completely focussed on completing the run. I managed to do so, although I was extremely extremely exhausted after the run. In fact, I had to walk more than half of a mile between miles 14 and 15. After that, I gathered enough energy to finish up the run with a slow jog. I took more time than normal to finish this run. I was just glad that I finished without injuring myself.

The most surprising part was that although all kinds of muscles were aching a lot on Saturday and Sunday, I was back in full form on Monday. This was an unexpectedly fast recovery. On Tuesday, at track we had hill repeats, and by then I was perfectly fine, even on the hilly terrain. I am so happy to be back in action after a week of anxiety.

Moving forward, we have a relatively relaxed week, with buddy runs and on-your-own runs of 5-6 miles. The next weekend run is the toughest run of the training season- at Woodside. It is a hilly course, and we are running 18 miles. The hill repeats will definitely help in handling that run.

hey pradnya, you will be just fine. Try to hold back on the pace a bit in the first half of the race and take it easy on the hills (its quite difficult to do that because in the first half when we are all really pumped up and rearing to go) but that energy shall be best utilized in the second half.